Nader's Running

Ralph Nader is running for President again, as an independent. Some people will boo this and say he shouldn't run. The old Democratic complaint about Ralph Nader is that he costs votes and helped the War Criminal win the 2000 election.

A few reasons why this is the wrong way to look at things.

1. Al Gore lost the 2000 election. He couldn't carry his home state of Tennessee, which would have won the race. Al Gore, much like John Kerry, is/was a horrible candidate. Maybe if Al Gore had made the environment an issue in 2000, which he didn't, he could have won a couple hundred thousand more votes and the White House. But Al Gore didn't. And its not hard to see why people would vote for Ralph Nader instead of Al Gore.

Democrats, repeat this after me: Al Gore lost the 2000 election. (He ran Lieberman, who endorsed John McCain for Christ's sake). The War Criminal didn't steal the election any more than JFK stole the 1960 election. Ralph Nader didn't cost the election. Al Gore, Joe Lieberman and a unorganized, uninspired Democratic Party lost the 2000 election.

2. Nader got .3 percent of the national vote in 2004. Clearly people have moved on.

3. Third party candidates are good. They broaden the debate. They hold the main parties accountable. The truth is, sometimes there isn't a big difference between the two candidates. There should be more than two choices. We can chose between 100 different types of cereal, and there are 3,000 channels on TV, but we can only have two centrist candidates?

4. Obama might not win the nomination. A choice between HRC, McCain and Ralph Nader is an interesting choice. Would you rather vote for Ralph or Hillary? And if Obama wins the nomination, Nader's appeal will be very small.

5. Once again, other countries have multiple candidates. Other countries have multiple parties. We have two. Sometimes, like right now, there are huge differences between the parties. One party wants to stay in Iraq, one wants to leave. One party wants universal health care, the other doesn't. In 2000, what were the big differences between the Republicans and the Democrats? Remember, Al Gore was the Guy Who Invented the Internet, while the War Criminal was A Uniter, Not A Divider. Not exactly two inspiring options.

So lets appreciate Ralph Nader, who at 73 might not be with us forever. And lets hope Michael Bloomberg or someone else will also run. We need to embrace new ideas and different viewpoints. There are forty different phone companies; can we have four different Presidential candidates?